Dr. Don Weaver, who has won national and international honours for his research into Alzheimer’s disease, is leaving Dalhousie University’s medical school for the University of Toronto.

He has been appointed director of the Toronto Western Research Institute, which is associated with the university. The five-year renewable position, which begins July 1, includes “a very generous and attractive startup package,” he said in an interview Thursday.

“My major focus is trying to discover drugs for Alzheimer’s and it’s a highly competitive and very difficult area. This gives me the opportunity to access more resources more quickly, and so it represents an opportunity to ramp up that particular aspect of the work.”

Weaver, a chemist as well as a neurologist, has been a member of Dal’s faculty since 2001. He holds associated positions at Capital Health and the IWK Health Centre.

Weaver said he’s had nothing but good experiences at the university, but the pull of more funding and resources in Toronto was irresistible.

“When things go really well, the big universities come looking and they can offer a lot,” he said. Weaver’s research aims to create a drug that would prevent proteins from clumping up in the brain and causing diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The research received a major boost last spring when the Sobey Foundation donated $2 million to establish the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation Irene MacDonald Sobey Endowed Chair in Curative Approaches to Alzheimer’s Disease.

Weaver was the first to hold the chair. He also holds the Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience at Dalhousie.

His departure follows that of Dr. Ivar Mendez, a neurological researcher who helped found the Brain Repair Centre at Dalhousie. Mendez will head up the University of Saskatchewan's surgery department.

When asked Thursday about the recent loss of researchers to other provinces, Premier Darrell Dexter said it wasn’t the province’s role to step in with more research money to match or beat other offers.

“We can’t engage in those kinds of competitions,” he told reporters in a post-cabinet scrum in Halifax. “We have to leave it to the universities to develop their research development plans and to make the investments that they can and see (as) prudent.”

Dexter said Dalhousie’s medical school is one of the most respected in Canada and is able to attract high-profile talent.

The school plans to fill both the Sobey Foundation Chair and the Canada Research Chair, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“We’re obviously very sorry to lose Dr. Weaver but we’re confident that we’ll attract another top scientist,” Allison Gerrard said.

Weaver said his and Mendez’s departures shouldn’t be seen as a slap against Dalhousie.

“My research is very oriented on making drug molecules and testing them and moving them along. That sort of activity would benefit from being at an institution like Toronto at this time. There are other research activities that will flourish and do quite well at an institution like Dalhousie.”